Daly City hillside carved open by massive water leak worries residents

DALY CITY -- As clean up continued Wednesday, residents were concerned about the long-term stability of the hillside slashed open the previous day by a ruptured city water pipe.

Watching as crews scooped up the mess on Lausanne Avenue, resident Agazio Catania, 58, said he hopes the city would permanently shore up the hill. It has a roughly 20-foot long and in some places 40-foot deep gully carved by about 45,000 gallons of water that gushed from a broken water line Tuesday. The neighborhood below the slope, which saw a lot of mud in its streets but no home damage or injuries, might not be so lucky next time.

"To me its all about the hillside," he said. "Have we done anything about this?"

City engineers have declared the hill stable, and crews were working Wednesday to make sure runoff from rains expected this weekend won't send more mud flowing into the street, Daly City water and sewer director Patrick Sweetland said. As for the long-range plan for the hill, he said the city will have to work with specialists to decide what's best.

"There are phases in our response to this, and right now we are focused on keeping the streets clear," Sweetland said.

On Wednesday the neighborhood roads were largely clean, but mud was still several feet high and covering at least several hundred square feet of Hillside Park. The park, which sits to the northwest of Lausanne, is immediately below the hillside and took a direct hit from the river of mud and water.

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Sweetland said he didn't have a price tag for the damage and wasn't sure how much mud had been hauled away from the neighborhood. But he said the city is holding on to the soil, which was carted off to Brisbane and a city-owned lot, for possible use in refilling the gully.

Though about a dozen cars along Lausanne Avenue were buried up to their wheels Tuesday after the 4:20 a.m. mudslide, roads reopened by about 6 p.m. the same day, officials said.